I Need Free/OpenSource Serial Emulator Software Ideas

[weasel7711]

Greetings,

I am practicing developing software that can communicate with hardware via an RS232 connection. I am using new PC hardware and I don't have any serial ports, nor do I have any actual devices with me that use serial communication. Does anyone have any ideas or recommendations for software that can run on Windows, preferably on Windows 7 that can emulate a COM port device with basic text IO? It would be nice if I could use this software for free so freeware/open source software is best. Thank you.

[rch1231]

Hello,

This may not help but who knows. There is a USB to serial cable you can buy that will allow you to use one of your USB ports as a Serial port. We use them all of the time at work to connect to the serial port on Cisco switches and firewalls. Once connected I usually use Putty or hyperterminal to connext to the serical port for communication.

[CimmerianX]

rch is correct. You will need a usb to serial adapter. They are very cheap and all techs should have one handy.

You connect it to usb, load the driver software, and it shows up as a high number com port.

Once connected, it's a fully functional com port you can use for RS232.

[stormal1]

http://www.eterlogic.com/Products.VSPE.html

Only the 32-bit emulator is free

You can also try using any freeware Virtual Machine emulation software if it suits your application.

[weasel7711]

I have used puTTY before and I have the usb to serial adapters at work, however I don't have home access to an RS232 device. So I would need software that would specifically emulate an rs232 device, and obviously it would have to connect to a virtual COM port. I would like to play around with programs that use puTTY like communication but that I can customize. I am looking into a job where creating a customized software interface for specific hardware would be the main requirement and I would like to make sure I know what I am doing before I apply.

stormal1,
Thanks I will check that out. From what the website tells me it seems to be exactly what I am looking for.